Leisure / inspiration

Retro 286

Amazing things are happening in the world -She told Ursula-. Right there on the other side of the river there are all sorts of magical devices, while we still live like the donkeys. (One Hundred Years of Solitude)

It was years when I was in high school that a Nicaraguan engineer brought a 286, with a 15-inch monochrome monitor, to the project warehouse. I remember being stunned to see how kardex could be worn on a display of green letters that greeted a Foxbase name, with shades changing pitch in response to the keyboard -No mouse-. Then I could see that my manual errors could be found easily, since the inventory was launched in almost one click, and I only had to compare the outputs on each day to find which requisition was wrong ... all with a wonderful command called "From inventary".

 

-Is not for you- Villavicencio told me, which was his last name. It's for Jorge. Who was head of warehouse and payroll; a somewhat literate guy who from the scribbles he wrote seemed to have learned from the Egyptians, good at his intentions and affectionately called Barba Juca.

 

That device caused me so much curiosity that I ended up in solitary moments getting into the different routines that had been built into a menu of letters from a panel that opened without even showing the DOS console. I was not very aware of what some programs, many of them utilitarian, were for, which is why I was forbidden to touch the secure device due to my antics making changes in Browse mode to see if the update of the forms was dynamic.

That was a lot of years ago, although little has changed my mania for knowing how novel there can be in a technological toy that my fingers have not touched. It must be in the blood. When I look at this photo, which shows the first computer (One Pentium MMX) That I had at my disposal with the fruit of my sleeplessness brings me a mixture of nostalgia and satisfaction for how I enjoyed those days ... hence the ease of this post not stylized, inconclusive.

The girl who lights my eyes says that there is magic in that photograph. By then my son was the soul of the family, a Pelt 54 centimeters tall, that came and went entangling itself in the modem cable that I crossed to connect to the Internet with the telephone in the living room. In that simple photo were concentrated the passions of my life, my son, the pen that my wife gave me, the used desk that we bought and the instrument with which I paid off the mortgage on my house during a time when the salary was insufficient.

Such is the life of changeable. So are obsolescent technologies. Who would think that I would end up spending a good part of my free time writing about what happens in this environment. And with what this has evolved, I still feel mania for passing me in the next two years ... by style to Mac, by principles to Ubuntu, by conviction to OSGeo software ... we'll see.

Yes… several things have changed: from SAICIC I switched to Neodata, from AutoCAD to Microstation, from Homestead to Wordpress, from the desktop to the Ipad, from the hard drive to Dropbox, from 64 kbps to 3G, my son stopped being unique when The baby arrives… several things have changed, except the girl who continues to light up my eyes 14 years later, renovating my desk so that it harmonizes with its details and my son who spends his time inventing how to modify textures and effects in emulated games.

Good times. Blessed are we that we were able to see so much change, adapt and enjoy these creatures that changed our stereotypes of marriage.

Golgi Alvarez

Writer, researcher, specialist in Land Management Models. He has participated in the conceptualization and implementation of models such as: National Property Administration System SINAP in Honduras, Management Model of Joint Municipalities in Honduras, Integrated Cadastre-Registry Management Model in Nicaragua, Territory Administration System SAT in Colombia . Editor of the Geofumadas knowledge blog since 2007 and creator of the AulaGEO Academy that includes more than 100 courses on GIS - CAD - BIM - Digital Twins topics.

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2 Comments

  1. It is good that he found someone to shape his cables and his heart because she is still the girl who lights up his eyes…. In the same way, the boy who looks at me with love causes butterflies in my stomach.

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